Mushe of Mardin (16th cent.) [Syr. Orth.]

Priest, scribe, and bp. A native of the village of Qāluq, in the region of
Ṣawro, near Mardin, Mushe was sent by Patr.
ʿAbdullāh I bar Sṭephanos to Rome, where he arrived with a few
mss. in or shortly before 1549. The aim of the mission was to search for
Syriac printed books or for opportunities to produce them. Whether Mushe was
additionally entrusted with the delicate task of improving relations between
the Syr. Orth and the Roman Catholic Church remains disputed. Mushe lived in
Rome and traveled through Europe until some time after 1556.

In Rome, he established contacts with some of the earliest Western scholars
interested in Syriac. Among them were Guillaume Postel, Johann Albrecht
Widmanstetter, and Andreas Masius. He collaborated with Widmanstetter in the publication of
the first edition of the Syriac NT, which appeared in Vienna in 1555 and
whose Syriac typeface derived from Mushe’s handwriting. Mushe served as
Masius’s Syriac teacher in Rome, and the latter frequently consulted him, in
particular while he was preparing his Syrorum
Peculium, a Syriac glossary that was included in vol. 6 of the
Antwerp Polyglot (1571). Mushe and Masius corresponded in Syriac; a number
of letters, belonging to the period 1553–55, are preserved. Masius also
translated into Latin a profession of faith that Mushe is said to have made
in 1552 and which Masius included in one of his later publications; its
exact status remains unclear.

During his time in Europe, Mushe copied many Syriac mss. Several of these are
extant, including the remarkable ms. London, Brit. Libr. Harley 5512, which
contains parts of the Roman Missal in Latin, written in Serṭo script, along
with three Syriac Anaphoras. Mushe wrote it for the bp. of the Abyssinian
Convent (San Stefano) in Rome, where he often resided, and it shows his
interest in, and familiarity with, the Catholic liturgy.

After 1556 Mushe returned to the Middle East, where he copied some further
mss. (among them Michael Rabo’s Chronicle, probably
from the author’s autograph) and where the (solely honorific?) title of
metropolitan bp. was conferred on him. He returned to Rome, probably in the
company of Patr.
Niʿmatullāh, following the latter’s abdication, in 1578. In Rome
he copied and annotated several more Syriac and Arabic mss. He died in or
shortly after 1592, possibly in Rome.